I did Park Run today...46 mins, how can I improve?

[Claptone]

Just that really I did parkrun today and completed it in 46 minutes.

I am overweight, size 16 and was pushing a one year old.

I did a mixture of jogging and walking and really struggled to keep up the jogging.
It just seems so far to go before oven even finished one lap even though I can see people much older yipping it round and lapping me 🤣 It's only 5km which I'd walk no problem, can't get my head around jogging for that long.

I had never jogged with a buggy before not sure if this helps or hinders?

The first time I did it pre baby and Covid I did the same course in 38 minutes but my goal now is to finish the year with a better time than 46 minutes.

I hate running but it seems to be the most convenient way to exercise with no excuse if I don't have childcare and the baby slept the whole way round so the fresh air and motion was good for him too.

Did any one else do parkrun today? How did you do?

I'm down to 41 minutes now, slow but it's better thank you for checking in

Well done that’s a great improvement! I did parkrun in 40 minutes today and I wasn’t pushing a buggy.

Awesome!!
The most important thing is not the time it's taken to complete it....it's that you have kept at it.
Well done!

Wow! 46 minutes with a baby in a buggy! That is impressive. It'd take me 35 minutes just running.

The way to increase your speed, in my experience, is a combination of just plodding along on 20-30 minute runs, and maybe once or twice a week doing some interval training.

Interval training - warm up with usual slow jog (well, it's slow in my case) for about 5 minutes, then for say, 20 secs run as fast as ever you can, as if the hounds of hell are after you. (Or you can start by aiming for a landmark eg run as fast as possible to the goalposts on the field, etc etc)

Then recover for 40 seconds by slow jog or walk (but I find it easier to keep up a verrry slooow jog).

Repeat maybe 5 times at first, hen finish with a cool down slow jog then a walk. Do the whole thing over about 30 minutes.

As you get fitter, you can increase the length of the "run like hell" intervals, but I'd never go over 40 seconds each minute, and would probably stick at 30 seconds run/30 secs recovery, or do more so you work up to 10 rounds of run like hell/active recovery.